How can organizations today prevent insider threats?
Karen was a software engineer working for a multinational company.? As a long-serving member of the company, she had a great deal of access to the company’s essential information assets, some of which included prototypes, projects, and other sensitive information, privy to Karen. In some months, Karen left the company.??
After some months, on a busy afternoon, a competitor announced the launch of an application that closely resembled the company’s software team was working on, for months! ?The company lost years of time and money in developing the project. ??
Upon investigation by their security team, it was found that Karen had extracted documents along with source code and sold them to a competitor just a few days before she left the company. ??They found that Karen’s actions were premeditated and that it was an act of retaliation for being assigned a role she didn’t want.???
The above is an example of how unpredictable and damaging insider threats can be and how important it is to plan out and implement measures to identify the signs and prevent insider threats quickly.??
Some major cases of insider threat incidents in 2024?
How can companies today ensure prevention of insider threats??
Since insider threats can have a negative impact, with high financial (over $7m on average!), operational, and reputational damage, organizations must come up with strategies for early detection and prevention of insider threats.
Apart from ensuring superior physical security measures like surveillance and access control management and security awareness training, here are some of the modern measures that can be implemented by organizations to prevent insider threats:
Analyzing and monitoring of user behavior
Organizations can use User Entity and Behavior Analysis (UEBA) to detect suspicious user behavior across the IT infrastructure. They can monitor negative tone across organization-wide communication helping them narrow down plausible insider threat risk factors. ??
Monitoring of access and activity logs
They can monitor access and activity logs for unusual patterns or signs of modifications pointing toward potential insider threats. It also includes the usage of Data Loss Prevention tools for monitoring data movement for the prevention of data loss, corruption, exfiltration, or unauthorized access.
Performing compliance checks from time-to-time
Periodical security audits and compliance-specific security posture assessments ensure that security weaknesses across the posture are preemptively addressed, assisting in the early detection of insider threats.
Implementing a whistle blower/reporting program
Framing a platform where employees can anonymously and confidentially report any suspicious activities within the company can help understand and detect plausible insider risks.
The biggest threat to a company is never hackers, crackers or script kiddies but Internal Employees. We have caught people who worked in Accounting, and Product Design. We did our duty to inform the C level's. It happens more frequently than what people think, it is not publicized at all. Having the right tools to track to see where your data resides. who has access to it where is it being shared even if it is downloaded to a USB flash drive. Best practice is give your staff a desktop you own as a business and lock it down to the point that USB drives are not enabled. Screen shots are not disabled, no Camera phones allowed if it is in the office. You hired your staff to work for you not for them to be in social media or watch youtube on YOUR time. Limit the employees role and access to data.